NAIDOC awards

Badimaya elder Alex "Ollie" George has been awarded Male Elder of the Year at this year's NAIDOC awards. Regular visitors to the CoEDL website will remember reading about the release of Ollie's new book last month.

Nganang Badimaya Wangga: Yarns with Gami Ollie George is an account of the life of Ollie, who is one of the last speakers of the Badimaya language.

CoEDL PhD student James Bednall (ANU) was involved with the production of the book. James worked at the Bundiyarra-Irra Wangga Language Centre as its linguist from 2011 to 2014 and in that time, he worked with Ollie on language documentation projects, which eventually led to the Badimaya dictionary in 2014. Another CoEDL and AIATSIS researcher Doug Marmion worked with Ollie in the 1990s on Badimaya, also at the language centre.

CoEDL is proud to be celebrating NAIDOC week and congratulates all the NAIDOC award recipients including three-time Olympian Patrick "Patty" Mills who has been named Person of the Year.

For coverage of this year's awards, including a list of recipients, visit the ABC here.